An email from a reader of my online newsletter gave me cause to think consciously about something that up until then had been active on a subconscious level. Here’s what he said:
“I think the fact you present your public face, and also in your newsletter you outline the fact that you are also human and aren’t afraid to present your vulnerable side when appropriate, helps.”
I think what he meant – but was perhaps too polite to say – is that I’m prepared to let everyone know what a plonker I really am. And when I think about it, he’s right. Let me tell you why…
When I was growing up, and in the period before I started to have some business and financial success, I didn’t know any millionaires. I didn’t even know anyone you could describe as wealthy. Everyone I knew was just like me – or not far from it. The richest person I knew ran the local greengrocers. That gives you some idea of what I’m talking about.
Because I didn’t actually know anyone who had accumulated wealth, the rich were a bit of a mystery to me. And there’s not a great deal of difference (both literally and linguistically) between mystery and mystique. The information and impressions I had came from newspapers, glossy magazines and TV. And when presented in these selective media outlets, you don’t really get a true or accurate picture.
Everyone who’d achieved financial success seemed impossibly sophisticated or charismatic or glamorous or educated or skilled or… or… something other than what I was.
And it was all a bit off-putting and demotivating. When you aspire to something, the first stage is to believe it’s possible. If you see other people who’ve already done it – people who share your background, imperfections and insecurities – then that’s very powerful in persuading you that you can do it too. If you see people with whom you have little in common, it makes it seem all the harder and more distant.
Once I started to achieve some success, and got to meet others who’d done the same, I realised that, like me, there was nothing intrinsically special or unusual about them. The difference was in what they’d done… how they’d played the cards they’d been dealt… rather than what they were.
And so when I got the opportunity to communicate with people who were looking to move forward with their lives, it just seemed natural that I would present things as they are, rather than perpetuating myth and mystique. If you want to give people the best chance of following in your footsteps, why would you do any other?
The wealthy and successful are just like you. They started out with the same insecurities, doubts and hang-ups that you have today. They have the same stupid thoughts and, out of the public gaze, are just as capable of making complete pillocks of themselves as anyone else. They are made of no better or worse stuff than you and, as such, there are no genuine barriers to you joining them.
Kind Regards
John Harrison
PUBLISHERS NOTICE
Dear Streetwise Customer,
Imagine sitting down this afternoon and tapping out a simple letter. It takes you perhaps a couple of hours to get it right…
And Then Over The Next Few Years It Brings In Over £5 Million.
Pure fantasy?
Not at all. I’ve done it. I’ll even show you the letter. And I’ve written lots of others just like it, although they weren’t all quite as successful as that one.
But Even So, Many Of Them Landed Thousands Of Pounds In My Bank Account Within Days, and Hundreds of Thousands Within Weeks.
Like to learn how to do the same?
Well there has really Never Been A Better Time for three reasons…
1. These letters bring in serious money when times are tough – and they don’t come much tougher than they are right now.
2. These letters are even more powerful when the world is relying on the internet for its requirements, just like it is right now.
3. You probably have some free time available to learn how to do this at the moment.
This is an exciting and realistic alternative to the gloom which is all around us today – an escape route. It’s an alternative that can quickly see you banking more than enough money to see yourself and your family right through this current crisis and then into uncharted financial success when all this is over.
This comes with a 100% cast iron 90 day money back guarantee. There is absolutely no risk to you to take a look.
Every year the World Series of Poker is held in Las Vegas – the world championship of the game. It’s a game with, seemingly, a large element of chance attached. The players can, after all, only play with the cards they’re given.
In the long term, the law of averages dictates that luck will be pretty evenly distributed amongst the players. You would therefore expect that the outcome of tournaments to fluctuate widely depending on the varying fortunes of those taking part. That’s not what happens. Although results do vary, the same good players perform consistently well, irrespective of the cards they’re dealt. And it’s the same in life.
It’s all too easy to complain about the cards you’ve been dealt and use that as an excuse for failure. The top players accept the cards they’re given – there’s nothing you can do about that –and then work out how best to use them to get the results they’re after. Even when people are dealt great cards, it’s all too easy to waste them.
At the risk of boring anyone not interested in football, it does provide us with an excellent example, showing why the ‘cards’ you’re dealt in life are less important than how they are used.
There can be few footballers dealt a better hand than George Best. Most experts agree that he was one of the most naturally gifted players of all time. And yet by the age of 26, when he should have been at his best, he virtually disappeared from the game, as did his opportunity to become the richest and most successful player of his generation. Few have achieved so little with so much.
At the same time as Best was ending his career, Kevin Keegan was just starting his. He was too small, too thin, and by his own admission, lacked great natural footballing ability. It would have been all too easy for him to give in to the hand he’d been dealt and accept that he would never be a top player because he didn’t have Best’s ability. But through hard work and determination he rose to become captain of his country and to win practically every honour in the game, making a not inconsiderable fortune for himself in the process.
Hard work and determination are not the only ways to overcome a terrible hand. For the moment, I’m going to stick with my football analogy…
A player who few would place in the ‘gifted’ category is Vinnie Jones. In fact, few would place him in their pub first team if footballing skill were the sole criteria! And yet he consistently played in the top division, represented his country and made a lot of money in the process. There are literally thousands of ‘Vinnie Joneses’ out there, but few get to play professionally at all. Certainly hard work and determination played a part, but so did a commitment to playing the game on his own terms.
If Jones had tried to play the game like George Best, he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. What he had to do was establish his strengths and play to them. He concentrated on what he could do, not what he couldn’t. Occasionally that may have meant bending some of the rules, but that’s what ordinary players have to do sometimes to stay in the game.
Jones was to prove that what he achieved in football was no fluke. He later used the same flare for playing his hand to the maximum in a completely separate field – one to which he would seem equally illsuited. ‘Vinnie Jones the footballer’ became ‘Vinnie Jones the Hollywood film star’. Just as he didn’t try to emulate Best on the football field, he didn’t try to emulate Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ian McKellen or even Tom Cruise on screen. But he did play the hand he had been dealt to great effect.
It doesn’t take a massive leap of logic to see that there’s a message here for anyone aiming for a business or personal goal. You may not have been dealt the hand of a George Best, or a Lionel Messi but that is no barrier to success. Learn to play your hand well, and you can usually beat most of those dealt a better one.
The key to success is accepting your hand (you won’t get another one!) and adapting to it where necessary. Certainly it may involve hard work, and you may have to make the rules work for you, rather than the other way round. But the end result when you achieve it will be all the more rewarding.
Kind Regards
John Harrison
PUBLISHERS NOTICE
Hello,
You have been hand-picked to receive this letter for a special reason. You’ll find out exactly why you were chosen when you take a look at the on line link below.
Here’s what it’s all about……
A few months ago, we sent a guy called Graham Carter, what he called a ‘crummy disc’ (the cheek of it!) in a plain brown envelope. On the disc were the words ‘Project X’, hand-written in red felt tip.
Why did we send it to him?
Because he was broke and we wanted him to try something out. We needed someone who was down on his luck…someone with none of the advantages which a lot of people set out with on a new project. Someone whose position was pretty hopeless really. Here’s what we figured…
PS. This could turn the way you live (and make a living) on its head. If you’re looking for more freedom, more money and to have your computer doing all the hard work for you while you get on with your day, you really should get on this right away.
PPS I’m only looking for five people to come in on this today. There will be other opportunities later, but just five today. We’re not going to rush this. It’s special.
I have a friend who’s mad about cars, but he never keeps one for longer than about six months. And what’s more, when he buys his cars, he knows he won’t be keeping them for a long time. So he doesn’t really look after them.
Servicing doesn’t get done, cleaning is never more than a quick run through the car wash, and he isn’t averse to giving them a fair amount of ‘stick’. You see he knows that any ill effects from this rough treatment will be someone else’s problem, because he’ll just trade in – and move on.
I have another friend who isn’t crazy about work, but he does tend to keep his jobs for about the same length of time as my first friend keeps his cars. Not that he gets the sack; it’s just that he gets bored very quickly. He knows from the very first day on a job that his stay will be short lived, and because he knows that, his commitment is less than 100%.
He does just enough to get by. Corners are cut, liberties are taken and he never goes that extra inch (let alone that extra mile) to impress the people he’s working for to progress in the organisation. He knows that long before the chickens come home to roost, he’ll have resigned and moved on.
These friends are cavalier with their car and their job because they know they have an escape route – an easy way to avoid the nasty consequences of their actions. What happens in the long run in these specific situations doesn’t really matter to them.
Now you might not like what they do… and you certainly won’t if you’re the next poor person to step into that particular car or job… but you have to admit that there’s a certain logic to it.
The trade-in and resignation offer a pre-planned escape… one that makes doing ‘the right thing’, a matter of choice rather than necessity. But how do you explain the behaviour of people who live their whole life the same way… as if they will soon be able to resign from it, or trade it in for a new one?
You see the hard truth is that you can’t resign from yourself – nor can you trade yourself in. You have no choice but to persevere with what you’ve got and work with it. You’re stuck with you!
In automotive terms, you are the only car you’re ever going to have. In career terms you’re the only employer you’ll ever work for. There are no ‘dealers’ where you can trade in your life, when your personal neglect gets the outcome it deserves.
And as far as I know, there’s only one guaranteed resignation option in life, but it’s not one that results in you finding another position. (Not above ground at least!) This is so fundamentally important, it underpins and supports just about everything you do in life.
Imagine you have a company, and you are allowed just one employee. Not only is he your only employee – he’s also the only employee you can ever have. You can’t replace him and he can’t leave. The success or failure of your entire enterprise rests with him. So how are you going to treat him?
Are you going to let him vegetate on a sofa eating junk food and smoking Player’s Full Strength while watching Sky Sports – or are you going to encourage him in the direction of healthy eating, cleaner living and regular exercise?
Are you going to leave him to pick up the job by trial and error, or are you going to invest in the best possible training so that he can operate at the absolute limits of his ability?
Are you going to leave him to his own devices, or are you going to continually monitor and analyse his performance – identifying any weaknesses and taking steps to put them right? Are you going to assume that once he’s been trained, you can forget about him, or are you going to take the view that the world is in a continual state of change and he needs to be regularly updated and trained on new ideas and developments?
If he becomes unhappy or dissatisfied, are you going to conclude that there’s nothing you can do about it, or are you going to take the time to ‘nail down’ the problem, and come up with a solution for him?
Think very carefully before you answer, because you are that employee and the enterprise is your life. When you look at it like that, wouldn’t it be astounding if you didn’t invest the maximum time, money and effort in developing and maintaining yourself so that you are the best you can possibly be?
Kind Regards
John Harrison
PUBLISHERS NOTICE
Hello,
You have been hand-picked to receive this letter for a special reason. You’ll find out exactly why you were chosen when you take a look at the on line link below.
Here’s what it’s all about……
A few months ago, we sent a guy called Graham Carter, what he called a ‘crummy disc’ (the cheek of it!) in a plain brown envelope. On the disc were the words ‘Project X’, hand-written in red felt tip.
Why did we send it to him?
Because he was broke and we wanted him to try something out. We needed someone who was down on his luck…someone with none of the advantages which a lot of people set out with on a new project. Someone whose position was pretty hopeless really. Here’s what we figured…
PS. This could turn the way you live (and make a living) on its head. If you’re looking for more freedom, more money and to have your computer doing all the hard work for you while you get on with your day, you really should get on this right away.
PPS I’m only looking for five people to come in on this today. There will be other opportunities later, but just five today. We’re not going to rush this. It’s special.
Here’s something you need to accept and work with, very quickly. We first hear kids in the playground complaining that “it’s not fair”, and, if it goes unchecked, they’re still saying the same thing when they’re drawing their pension. It’s pointless and self-defeating.
Life isn’t fair. Nobody ever said that it was. People are born with differing natural attributes and some of these attributes have an impact on what we see as fairness. Sometimes, people will be given favourable treatment because of these attributes, which isn’t warranted. Good looking people, for example, are often favoured in situations where looks don’t really matter.
Quiet, thoughtful and sensible people are often passed over in favour of the charismatic, dogmatic and wayward. The kind and virtuous often receive no reward, while calculation and deceit goes unpunished. The talented, hard-working and able often lose out to those with the ‘right connections’. Fairness just doesn’t come into any of it.
Why is this important? Because many go through life waiting for things to become fair and recoiling from situations where they are not. If you do this, you will become severely disenchanted and miss out on a lot of opportunities. Life will never be fair. If you’re on the positive side of unfairness, don’t feel guilty. Capitalise on it.
If you’re on the negative side, don’t moan or give up. Recognise what’s happening and take action. Unfairness can usually be overcome by effort and application. Those who are unfairly favoured have a tendency towards complacency that makes them easier to prevail over than you might think.
Kind Regards
John Harrison
PUBLISHERS NOTICE
URGENT – Partners Wanted!
Hello,
Over the last few weeks, I’ve putting the finishing touches to a unique opportunity, the like of which we’ve never been able to offer before. It’s the opportunity for a small number of customers to partner with Streetwise Publications and take the helm of a micro-business we’ve created which has already pulled in £1,642,742 as I write this.
Well now it’s ready, and you are one of the very first people I’m alerting to this today.
The recent Coronavirus lockdown and an announcement at the last budget which went unnoticed by most people, has turbocharged what was already a highly profitable business. What happened in lockdown and a loophole created by the budget announcement are real game changers. It’s an unprecedented opportunity.
Who is this perfect for? Anyone who wants to make a great deal of moneyworking in their spare time from home and has access to a PC or laptop.
Anyway, take a look now. As you’ll see, places on this are very limited (for obvious reasons) so don’t delay taking a look.
Very Best Wishes,
John Harrison
PS When you join us in this, we will be on hand to provide full back up and support to ensure you succeed.
When you’re young it’s very easy to bemoan your lack of experience and resources, but you currently sit on some huge untapped resources that older people can’t hope to match.
Here’s a little test for you…
Name a song written by Paul McCartney. Too easy? Okay, how about a song written by Barry Manilow. I’m not really testing you am I? Here’s the last one – name a song written by Elton John.
Anyone with an average interest in popular music would fairly easily be able to name at least one song by each songwriter, and in most cases, be able to name quite a few. But now I’m going to make that question a bit harder by adding five words – so hard in fact, that I suspect that not one in a 100 people could answer it. Here are those five extra words… “In the last ten years.”
You see, each of those songwriters is still actively writing songs, and yet their ‘best’ work – the work for which they will be remembered long after they are dead – was condensed into a short ‘hot’ period early in their career. Despite being older and (in theory) more experienced, their later work somehow hasn’t carried the same resonance as that which they created in the early days.
Now I haven’t picked these songwriters out because they are exceptions. Choose any popular songwriter from the last 40 years and you’ll find the same thing – a comparatively short ‘hot’ period early in their careers followed by an awful lot of plodding… Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel – all the same. As I write this, Ed Sheeran is going through a similar ‘hot’ period. So what’s going on?
Everyone has an untapped source of creativity lurking just below the surface. It’s a hidden store of wonderful ideas and inspiration that lies there, waiting to be released. The scale of this untapped source will vary from person to person of course, (we don’t all have a McCartney-sized well of musical ideas in there for example) but what we have, isn’t unlimited. Once the creative flow has started, ideas flood out very quickly, but eventually the flow will diminish, as will the quality of those ideas. In the case of songwriters, they come to rely on perspiration rather than inspiration after that – on what they know and have learned, rather than what flows from within. But it’s never the same.
It appears that a similar process takes place, no matter what the purpose of your creativity – whether that is art, literature, music or something more mundane like a business or career progression. When you embark on a business or money-making venture for the first time for example, the ideas for products, advertising and promotions you come up with in the early days will be amongst the most creative you ever have, because they will come from within. They will be the equivalent of McCartney’s Yesterday – not one of the countless pop songs he’s penned in the last 25 years or so.
And that’s why, contrary to what you might think, you start with a massive advantage over the established players in any field requiring creativity – an advantage that helps counteract some of the experiences and advantages which older people have. Your well of ideas is both untapped and full.
This will be a golden period for you, and the really good news is that you have total exclusivity over it. Your combination of skills, experience, ability, personality and innate talent is unique. And the ideas and inspirations that spring from that combination will be unique too.
Kind Regards
John Harrison
PUBLISHERS NOTICE
URGENT – Partners Wanted!
Hello,
Over the last few weeks, I’ve putting the finishing touches to a unique opportunity, the like of which we’ve never been able to offer before. It’s the opportunity for a small number of customers to partner with Streetwise Publications and take the helm of a micro-business we’ve created which has already pulled in £1,642,742 as I write this.
Well now it’s ready, and you are one of the very first people I’m alerting to this today.
The recent Coronavirus lockdown and an announcement at the last budget which went unnoticed by most people, has turbocharged what was already a highly profitable business. What happened in lockdown and a loophole created by the budget announcement are real game changers. It’s an unprecedented opportunity.
Who is this perfect for? Anyone who wants to make a great deal of moneyworking in their spare time from home and has access to a PC or laptop.
Anyway, take a look now. As you’ll see, places on this are very limited (for obvious reasons) so don’t delay taking a look.
Very Best Wishes,
John Harrison
PS When you join us in this, we will be on hand to provide full back up and support to ensure you succeed.
When my daughter was eight she moved from one primary school to another. The new place was completely different. Educational standards were much higher and structure and discipline were right at the top of the list of priorities. Everybody was expected to dress and behave correctly and treat each other with respect. I’d have hated it, but she absolutely loved the place.
A few days after starting she came in from school, excited about the afternoon they’d just spent preparing and practising for sports day the following week. “It’s so much better than at the other place,” she said, “It’s a lot stricter… there’s no thumbs on eggs!”
I wasn’t sure whether this was a good or bad thing because I know one thing for sure – out in the real world, she’s almost certain to come up against people with thumbs planted firmly on eggs. It doesn’t matter what she wants to do, she’ll inevitably come up against people who are bending or breaking the rules in order to win. And that’s the same for you. So how should you react?
Well the universal default solution seems to be to whine and whinge about the injustice and unfairness of it. This is usually accompanied by feelings of anger and stress. So you’ll moan and groan and let off a few expletives. You’ll use the word unfair a lot. But does that do any good? Of course it doesn’t, and it can only have a damaging effect on your health if you allow yourself to be affected like that. So what CAN you do?
Well you could complain to the ‘referee’. Depending on the field you’re operating in, and the seriousness of the thumb-on-egg transgression, that referee could be the police, a court, a trade association, a regulatory body, an ombudsman or some other higher authority. There may be times when that’s a sensible course of action, but most of the time, it won’t be.
Why? Because it will be time-consuming, expensive and will divert you from your primary goals. When you’re eight years old and at school, telling the teacher is a viable solution. It’s quick, cost-free and usually effective. In the real world, it’s slow, expensive and the outcome is uncertain. Over the years, I’ve had cause to appeal to the ‘referee’ on a number of occasions, and although I’ve almost always won, it’s rarely felt like it.
So is there an alternative? Actually there are three…
You can stick your own thumb on the egg. Pretty simple this one. If you can’t beat ’em, you decide to join ’em. There are, however, two key considerations here – your moral position and the possible consequences of sliding your thumb over that egg. If your moral position is such that any egg holding is completely out of the question, then the consequences are largely irrelevant. This option just isn’t for you. You have to live with yourself and you have to sleep soundly at night.
But if you find yourself wavering a little, you need to assess the possible consequences, the potential rewards, and whether one justifies the other. It’s impossible to generalise here because in one situation you may be risking jail for a few hundred pounds and in another you may be risking a mild rebuke from a trade association for a million. In reality, your situation will fall somewhere between the two, and the course of action you choose will be a very personal decision.
Your second option is to just accept it. So you find out as much as you can about the way these people work, counteract it where you can, and don’t worry about the places where you can’t. You work within your own moral code and framework at all times, and don’t concern yourself with people who operate within a different framework. If you want to continue in your field, and aren’t comfortable stretching the boundaries, then this is the only sensible long-term option. The main shift you need to make is a psychological one, and I can’t pretend it’s easy. Simple – yes. Easy – no. Because like a drug-free athlete in the Olympic Games, you have to accept that the price of your stance is that you’re not going to win, and lesser performers will beat you.
Your final option is to get out of the race altogether. You’re in a race. Your competitors are cheating. You don’t like it. You may decide to go and compete in another race where the competitors aren’t so nasty. Now this may be an option if you happen to have found yourself in the dirtiest race in town, but you need to be sure of that first. The harsh truth is that you may find yourself jumping from the frying pan into the fire. As any hardened eight-year-old egg-and-spoon race contestant will tell you, you often can’t see the thumbs on eggs until you’re in the race and running alongside.
I can’t and won’t tell you what you should do. All I can do is to alert you to the undeniable fact that whatever race you get involved in in life, a number of your competitors will be keeping their egg in place with something other than skill and ability. I’m not going to say you should bend the rules; call in the referee; just accept it or get out of the game altogether. But I am going to tell you not to whinge and whine about how unfair it all is, because it won’t change a damned thing. Nobody ever said it was fair. The only question is what are you going to do about it?
There’s one more solution I haven’t told you about yet. You see, not all egg-and-spoon-race cheats are as obvious as to put their thumbs on their eggs. The really canny ones are a little cleverer than that and use a small piece of Blu Tack to attach the egg to the spoon. It’s almost as effective, but totally undetectable to either the referee or fellow competitors – even when they’re running alongside.
If I were looking to secure an unfair advantage, I’d choose the Blu Tack on the spoon every time. I’ll leave you to ponder where the Blu Tack opportunities might be in your life.
Kind Regards
John Harrison
PUBLISHERS NOTICE
Just In…
Hello,
We have just received the email below from one of our customers. I thought you might be interested in what he has to say…
From: John C******* [john********@*****.com] Sent: 09 August 2020 09:58 To: Admin Subject: “The Hermes Strategy “
Dear Bill,
Well that was a result —- I certainly wasn’t expecting the system to pay for itself in 2 days with 66/1 shot Star of Emaraaty! I have backed 66/1 shots before, but I don’t think I would have picked this one!
Once again ——Thank You Very Much.
Kind Regards,
John
If you’d like full details on what he is talking about please Click Here
“The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement.”
“Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
I think most of us would at least see some truth there. Advertising is very sophisticated now, even compared to 15 or 20 years ago. Surely we must be close to the limit of what can be done.
And the same could be said of invention and innovation. Over the past 100 years we’ve invented practically everything man ever dreamed of, and a great deal more besides. In recent years the computer and the digital revolution seem to have completed the picture. It certainly seems like there’s little of any consequence left to be invented.
If you find yourself nodding in agreement with any of the above, consider the following… The writer, Samuel Johnson, made the first statement, highlighting the perfection of the advertising business, in 1759 – over 250 years ago. The second statement, bemoaning the downfall of invention, was made by Charles Duell, US Patent Office Commissioner in 1899 – over 100 years ago. In fact, his disillusionment caused him to resign from his job. Still, I’m sure he didn’t miss much.
Here’s the point. Pick any time in history and you will find that people felt that previous generations had it easier, that the opportunities were better and more plentiful, that it was so much more simple to make your mark in the world. If only we could have been around then. We’d have really made a go of it! We have a word for this. We call it nostalgia. Fact is, when we look back at past opportunities we do so with the benefit of hindsight. When we’re assessing the current openings available to us we have to do so using foresight. And that’s considerably less reliable!
We can all look back a comparatively short time and say how much easier it would have been back then to prosper in computers, software, mobile phones or a host of other markets that were in their infancy at the time. And we may well be right. But the people getting out there and actually doing it at the time didn’t really know that for sure. It’s only hindsight that adds the certainty. Foresight created the profit.
Here in the 21st Century, you can be sure that the new opportunities available, and the avenues for improving existing opportunities, are at least as plentiful as at any time in history. They’re just not as obvious to you because you don’t have the benefit of hindsight to guide you.
Don’t fall into the nostalgia trap. In ten years’ time, these will be the “good old days” when ‘getting on’ was as easy as falling off a log. By then, of course, things won’t be nearly so easy, and opportunities won’t be nearly as plentiful. Except, of course, they will. Remember, becoming a success in whatever you want to do is as easy as it’s ever going to get. There’s absolutely no logical reason for looking back, or delaying making a start for a moment longer.
Kind Regards
John Harrison
PUBLISHERS NOTICE
Just In…
Hello,
We have just received the email below from one of our customers. I thought you might be interested in what he has to say…
From: John C******* [john********@*****.com] Sent: 09 August 2020 09:58 To: Admin Subject: “The Hermes Strategy “
Dear Bill,
Well that was a result —- I certainly wasn’t expecting the system to pay for itself in 2 days with 66/1 shot Star of Emaraaty! I have backed 66/1 shots before, but I don’t think I would have picked this one!
Once again ——Thank You Very Much.
Kind Regards,
John
If you’d like full details on what he is talking about please Click Here
You may not realise it yet, but the weeks, months and years will very soon start whizzing by at a rate you find hard to comprehend. If you’ve got things you want to do (and who of us hasn’t?) it’s never too early to get started.
You may not recognise the name Lenny McLean. In the 1970s and early 1980s he was ‘king’ of the unlicensed boxing ring. When he wasn’t fighting men in the ring he was fighting them outside it as a bare-knuckle fighter, minder, debt collector and doorman – the sort of character for whom the word ‘colourful’ was invented!
In his later years McLean moved into TV and films in small supporting roles, and his last appearance was in the hit film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. I say last appearance, because while making the film he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died soon after.
Now, up until being issued with a ‘death sentence’, McLean had always relied on his physical attributes and presence to make a living. He realised that this avenue was no longer open to him, and not only that, but decades of hitting and being hit had done little to benefit him financially. In short, he was effectively broke, and he knew that when he died his wife would have nothing.
It dawned on McLean that the value in what he’d been doing for the last 30-odd years was not in the work he’d done, but in the story he could tell. And so he decided to write his autobiography. It was entitled The Guv’nor – McLean’s nickname in the boxing ring. When the book was published, it was an immediate hit and remained firmly placed in the Top Ten Bestsellers list for at least two years.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the autobiography ultimately earned far more than McLean made from his other activities throughout his entire career.
Sadly, he isn’t around to benefit – and that’s the point. This book could have been written at any time and McLean would have been able to enjoy the benefits, but it took something catastrophic to shift him out of his comfort zone and into a new, better and more lucrative course of action. In reality, most of us are like this.
We have ambitions, we think there’s probably a better way, we suspect there’s more out there for us, but our current life isn’t so bad. And so inertia gets in the way and stops us from taking the actions necessary to move on.
Yes, we want more but before we get it we have to do something. We have to take action. And that’s the difficult bit. That’s why we wait – to be made redundant… for an ailing business to finally collapse… for a milestone birthday… for New Year’s Eve… to become ill or disabled… whatever – before finally doing something positive.
If we’re fortunate and it’s not too late, everything works out well, our new path is successful and we go from strength to strength. But why wait to be forced into a corner, or for some false and meaningless future date before doing it? After all, we can never get that wasted time back – the time between being able to do it and actually doing so.
I think, the writer, Mark Twain, summed it up perfectly when he said: “Twenty years from now, you’ll be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, dream, discover.”
It’s a great quote, and so true. Speak to most people in the later years of their lives and you will rarely hear talk of things that they wish they hadn’t done; but plenty of talk about opportunities which have now passed, and which should have been seized upon at the time.
Three of the saddest words to start any sentence are: “If only I’d… ” How many times have you heard them? You really don’t want to be the one using them in twenty years’ time.
Can you imagine anyone lying on his or her deathbed, with a saddened look in their eyes, and saying: “I wish I’d spent a bit more time in that dead-end job”? Neither can I. But the truth is that millions lie there wishing that they’d chased their dream; that they’d taken that chance…
Don’t be one of them
Kind Regards
John Harrison
PUBLISHERS NOTICE
Dear Streetwise Customer,
I hope you’re keeping safe and well.
This offer is limited, so we are only make it available to our most valued Streetwise customers at the moment.
Back in the autumn, we alerted a few of our customers to a course, created by a guy making what seemed at the time to be an outrageous prediction.
He predicted the world would soon be gripped by a unprecedented crisis which would create a huge financial opportunity. Crazy eh?
Anyway the course revolved around a strategy which would enable anyone to make £2,803 a month to ‘tick over’ in normal times, but would then transform into a massive fortune maker once the implications of the predicted crisis hit.
Not many people (including me!) believed the prediction, but £2,800 a month is certainly worth having and a number of our customers got on the bandwagon and started doing well with it…and then the crisis came…sooner than anyone thought.
The big opportunity he planned for is about to hit, and I want as many of our customers as possible to benefit…but there’s a hitch.
For reasons explained when you take a look at the details here, I can only help NINE people at the moment. But those nine people are going to get something nobody else has been able to get up until today…
The full programme in one package and at a huge discount!
The adjective that sums up many people’s lives, when they are left to their own devices, is ‘drifting’. They drift through school into a college or University course and then on into a job. Little or no thought is given to any of it. It’s a course; it’s a job. You’re lucky to have either. It will do.
At the end of each day they drift home, eat some junk food, watch some junk TV and catch up with the latest junk gossip online. Sooner or later they will drift ever deeper into a relationship with someone with no real consideration for whether this person is right for them, and before they’ve had time to think about it (not that they would do anyway) they’ve drifted into parenthood, marriage or both.
Pretty soon, it’s hard to tell one day from another, and one week imperceptibly blends into the next. Eventually longer periods also blend seamlessly into each other, with the only discernible difference between one year and the next being the size of their gut, the destination of their fortnight in the sun and the location of the office Christmas party.
Any changes they do make are purely reactive. They make no attempt to plan, create or actively advance. And before they know it, they’re stuck in a rut with sides they can’t see over the top of – approaching middle age and wondering where the hell their life went.
Think I’m over-dramatising? I’ve hardly started. And unless you make a firm commitment to take control of your own life and your destiny right now, this will happen to you too. Jim Rohn, the motivational speaker and writer, highlighted the problem very well. “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” By drifting, you make yourself cannon fodder – ripe for sacrifice in the pursuit of other people’s plans.
To escape that fate, you have to take positive, proactive action now. You have to think, you have to plan and you have to take action. Nobody can, or will, do it for you. Nor will it happen by accident or magic. Drifting is an inevitable precursor to disappointment and failure. Whatever you want, it’s up to you to take action to make it happen.
Kind Regards
John Harrison
PUBLISHERS NOTICE
Dear Streetwise Customer,
I hope you’re keeping safe and well.
This offer is limited, so we are only make it available to our most valued Streetwise customers at the moment.
Back in the autumn, we alerted a few of our customers to a course, created by a guy making what seemed at the time to be an outrageous prediction.
He predicted the world would soon be gripped by a unprecedented crisis which would create a huge financial opportunity. Crazy eh?
Anyway the course revolved around a strategy which would enable anyone to make £2,803 a month to ‘tick over’ in normal times, but would then transform into a massive fortune maker once the implications of the predicted crisis hit.
Not many people (including me!) believed the prediction, but £2,800 a month is certainly worth having and a number of our customers got on the bandwagon and started doing well with it…and then the crisis came…sooner than anyone thought.
The big opportunity he planned for is about to hit, and I want as many of our customers as possible to benefit…but there’s a hitch.
For reasons explained when you take a look at the details here, I can only help NINE people at the moment. But those nine people are going to get something nobody else has been able to get up until today…
The full programme in one package and at a huge discount!
I want you to imagine that you have taken leave of all your senses, and for some reason have decided that you want to travel to Rotherham. And you have no idea how to get there. You flick through your address book, and realise that you only know three people from Rotherham…Paul Shane (who was in Hi-De-Hi) Paul from The Chuckle Brothers… and me.
Paul isn’t returning your calls (he can be like that) Barrie is away doing a summer season in Rhyl, and so as a last resort you decide to contact me for directions. Despite being a little miffed at being your third choice behind two ‘C List’ celebrities, you catch me in a charitable mood, and so I send you step-by-step instructions on how to get here.
I think no more about it until the day of your journey, when I get an irate phone call from you…
“What have you done to me?…Have you any idea where I’ve ended up? Barnsley…bloody Barnsley! It’s worse than Rotherham.”
I’m amazed to receive your call ~ not because you say Barnsley is worse than Rotherham (it is) but because you got lost. I mean, I know my directions were spot on. “I don’t understand it,” I say, “you should have arrived in Rotherham without any problems. Did you follow the directions exactly?”
“Of course I did…” you say, somewhat irritated, before adding a little sheepishly, “…for most of the way. But then you directed me along the motorway. I don’t like driving on the motorway, and so I went along the A640 which looked as if it runs alongside it. And it did for a while, but then it veered off. Took me an hour to get back on track.
Anyway, I got back on your route eventually, and I came to a roundabout. You said take the third exit, but I didn’t like the look of that at all. It went straight through a scruffy steelworks. I’d have got my car filthy. So anyway, I took the second exit which looked to be going in roughly the same direction, but went through some nice countryside. Don’t know what happened after that, but the next thing I saw was a ‘Welcome To Barnsley’ sign. Last time I ask you for directions!”
I’ll come back to Barnsley in a moment, butI want to give you another scenario first…
I want you to imagine something almost as strange as the desire to visit Rotherham. I want you to imagine that you are having a second childhood moment, and have decided that you’d like to make an Airfix model of a Lancaster Bomber. So you go into your local model shop, mumble something about it being a present for your nephew, and take home a box of bits, some glue and some instructions.
The shop keeper thinks no more about it untilhe opens his doors the next Saturday morningto be faced by you – red-faced and angry, andbrandishing something in your hand.
“Look at this!” you say, shaking an object so close to the shopkeeper’s face that he can’t quite make out what it is. “This is supposed to be a Lancaster Bomber. It looks more like something spawned from a brief liaison between a wheelie bin and a Dalek! I can’t believe you sold me this piece of crap.“
“I don’t understand it,” says the shopkeeper, after removing what was supposed to be the Lancaster’s wing from his left nostril. “It’s not meant to look like that. Did you follow the instructions?”
“Of course I followed the instructions.” you reply. “I mean, you can’t follow them word for word can you? The big bits looked easy to put together and so I did them first. I know the instructions said you had to do some small bits first, but I wanted to get going with the damned thing.
Anyway, when I’d done the big bits, I was going to do the little bits later. But then I couldn’t get them to fit in ~ and you needed to have them in place to finish the model off. I couldn’t get the tail to go on at all. Last time I’ll buy a bloody model from you!”
For a number of years now,something has puzzled me…
I sell the same product to two different people, and one writes to say that it is literally the best thing since sliced bread, and the other writes to tell me that it is a steaming pile of horse poo, and I should be locked up for selling it.
Same product…two completely different reactions.
I should point out that these are not products purchased for the way they look, or what they do when you plug them in. They are products comprising information and instructions which you need to follow in order to do something…
Usually when I get this sort of diversereaction, it’s a product designed to helpthe recipient make some more money.
Now for quite some time, I’ve suspected that the divergent experience people have with these products correlates with the propensity of the recipients to follow the instructions. In other words (like the villains in my two stories about getting to Rotherham, and building an Airfix model) the people who failed were unsuccessful because they didn’t follow the instructions.
I mean look at it this way…
If you had to cross a minefield, it would make sense to follow exactly in the footsteps of someone who had already done it, would it not? Does that make sense? Taking a different route because it looked quicker or by-passed some nasty mud, wouldn’t be a sensible option. You would have absolutely no idea whether your deviation from the prescribed route would result in total disaster. In a minefield, the gap between total success and total destruction may be little more than a hair’s breadth, and the uninitiated have no way of knowing where the make-or-break borders are.
And it can be exactly the samein a business or money-making enterprise.
Now as I said, I suspected that the difference between success and failure ~ between sliced bread and horse poo ~ with these products, was in the application of the instructions, but I couldn’t really prove it. You see, when you set up and run a money- making project, the number of things you need to do (and the order in which they need to be done) necessitates a relatively complex process. And asking someone to recount the process they’ve gone through isn’t normally very productive…
They can’t remember ~ or don’t want to remember!
However, I recently had a breakthrough, because we launched a betting advisory service, and the process involved there is one of childlike simplicity. It goes as follows:
1. Receive a recommended bet by email detailing the event, the outcome to be bet on, the acceptable odds and the size of the bet.
2. Place the bet!
That’s it! Really!! There’s absolutely nothing further to do. No decisions to make, no further actions to take, no thinking to do. Nothing. It’s all done for you. Just follow the instructions.
By the end of the first month of this new service I was delighted. The results had come in just as we’d expected and hoped, and anyone following the advice in that first 30 days would find themselves over £600 in profit.
Perfect…
Or so I thought until I received an email from an irate customer: “You said this service would be profitable. I’ve been on it for a month now and I haven’t made a penny. In fact I’ve barely broken even. I’ve been conned…” etc, etc. You get the idea.
I emailed this gentleman back and expressed my surprise at his disappointment. I asked him to send me his betting records, so that I could see why they didn’t tally with mine. A couple of days later I received an email detailing a betting record for the month, which did indeed show a small loss. But his betting record had very little in common with the instructions he’d been sent.
There were five days’ bets which were missing altogether (“I was away on holiday that week.”) another three bets which weren’t placed (“I just didn’t fancy those.”) and some winning bets that were placed at a fraction of the recommended staking level (“I was a bit short of ‘readies’ that week and so I had to cut back.”) There was even one bet which we hadn’t sent him at all! (“That was one I picked out myself.”)
The guy had paid for information from someone who knew the betting equivalent of the road to Rotherham, the right way to build a Lancaster Bomber, and the way through a minefield – but had chosen to ignore or be selective with the advice…
With the result that he’d endedup in Barnsley, holding a piece ofcrap with half his leg blown off!
Now look, there’s an important caveat here. You have to choose your business advisors carefully in the first place. But once you’ve done that, there’s no sense in being selective, or trying to second-guess with respect to the information, instructions and route map you’re given. It’s not a menu from which you can choose the ‘dishes’ that seem the most palatable. You have to swallow the whole meal…
As children, we’ll almost always choose the ice cream over the spinach ~ given a free choice. And even as adults, when we know what’s good for us, the lure of the palatable, easy-to-swallow part of the meal is a strong one…
And so it is with business.
You have to swallow the whole meal exactly as it’s served up. Miss something out, or eat it in the wrong order, and you could very well find yourself nutritionally deficient or with indigestion…
Or skint-arsed as my bankmanager likes to call it!
So buckle down and eat your greens. They’re not just good for you, they’re essential. Just make sure your chef knows how to cook them first.
